Is There A Rational Basis To The Idea Of Karma?

[hookedondhamma]

[Several]

dam_n that Moses was a hard case.

[lungmi]

http://www.buddhanet.net/cmdsg/payutto.htm

My answer to the discussion.

I posted it several times. Up to you.

[lungmi]

http://www.watnyanav...ddha_dhamma.pdf

For serious studies.

My aim in the next years is the translation in German and French.

Edited August 12, 2012 by lungmi

[Several]

Yes, there is a rational basis, same as christianity & others,

namely to create some values & ethics, or humanity really.

Moses said: If thee rip the balls off another man thee shalt suffer hell !

Buddha said: Karma goes downhill and you'll be reborn without balls if you rip the balls

off another man

Hang on, is this why there are more women than men in the world?

[bankei]

Slap the person next to you on the face and see what happens.

Bankei

[cdnvic]

The entire universe is governed by Newton's laws, one of which (the third) pretty much explains Karma as it exists in the universe. Where people start disbelieving in it is when they look for a direct reaction, like what a diety would do to reward or punish someone, when what karma really is is the net positive or negative effect that all things have on the world around them.

[huli]

The entire universe is governed by Newton's laws, one of which (the third) pretty much explains Karma as it exists in the universe. Where people start disbelieving in it is when they look for a direct reaction, like what a diety would do to reward or punish someone, when what karma really is is the net positive or negative effect that all things have on the world around them.

I think you might have your Laws mixed up.

A common definition of Newton's Third Law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I note that karma does not cause opposite reactions. That would be good producing bad.

The First Law comes closer: An object at rest remains at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. So we might imagine that if a person does good, he is acted upon by this force. Good begets good.

The Second Law has to do with acceleration. It is close to the first one except something is already moving when acted upon by an outside force. The general principal applies to karma also. Do good and you are already good, it adds to your good karma.

So, the 1st and 2nd, OK, but the 3rd?

[lungmi]

One thing all Buddhists agree on is that kammic potential follows us through successive lifetimes. We have a kammic inheritance.

As I understand it, the animal kingdom is kill or be killed. Lots of fear, lots of suffering. Just being an animal is the fruit of unwholesome kamma.

An ant moving towards sugar is bijaniyama - the law of heredity. It is genetically programmed that way. A human using sugar to intentionally kill an ant is kammaniyama (human behaviour: good/bad actions bring good/bad results).

What is "khammic potential'? All Buddhist agree, me too. But thousends of different explanations of this potential, most cultural deviations in the aim to explain the nearly inexplainable to "believing followers" (misuse implicated).

[camerata]

I don't know how to explain it. By "potential" I just meant the fruit of kamma that has not yet appeared. I notice some writers use the word "disposition."

[BuckarooBanzai]

This is an excerpt from "Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma" by Norman C. McClelland - Perhaps only one persons opinion and more than you ever wanted to know but interesting all the same. It is a direct response to the basis of the idea of Karma.

"The origins of Karma"

The concept of karma, without doubt, had its origin in India, or more specifically, in northern or northwestern India, as two factors prove.

First, it is in India, and those cultural areas directly influenced by Indian culture, that the idea of karma as a moral element is inextricably bond up with the rebirth concepts. Outside of Indian influenced cultural areas this linkage generally does not exist.

Secondly, the word 'karma' is of Sanskrit derivation and means 'action' and in its earliest usage referred to the action required to perform the Vedic sacrifices. As such, in this earliest use karma had a purely ritual meaning and had nothing to do with the belief in rebirth. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Western scholars, though agreeing that the concept of karma arose directly from Vedic thought, find no evidence of a rebirth-karma association anywhere in the earliest Vedic literature. It is a mostly pro--Hindu minority of scholars who argue for such an early Vedic based belief in both rebirth and an association of rebirth with karma as a moral principle.

Exactly how rebirth and karma became associated with one another will probably never be fully known; however, it is possible to speculate that in the very late Vedic period, as tribal oriented village units were brought together into larger governing units (small kingdoms) social disruption of urbanization began to occur. With the resulting greater sense of individual alienation social conformity could no longer be justified on the basis of tribal or family ties.

In a tribal system the behavior of the individual is more or less the responsibility of the kinship group. If a member of the tribe commits a crime his family, clan, or even the whole tribe may be held equally guilty. With the breakdown of such a kinship group, a new, more individualized basis for moral responsibility had to be found. Karma fulfilled this need.

The idea that one's current misfortune was due to one's "own" past mistakes, and that one's future condition depended on one's present behavior provided such moral responsibility in the new social milieu. In other words, the concept of karma was a socio-politically useful doctrine and it was this concept that became the main ideological support for India's prevailing social organization, the caste system.

Evolution of the karma concept appears to have come about through two developments. First, rather than good or bad karma being the proper or improper performance of any one Vedic sacrifice itself, it came to be interpreted as the cumulative actions of a lifetime of performing proper or improper sacrifices. Such cumulative karma would then determine whether or not the individual, at death, was blessed with the right to join the ancestors or experience a less desirable fate.

Second, there seems to have been a reinterpretation of the Vedic sacrifice as an internal rather than an external action. This meant that one's inner actions or deeds became the source of one's success or failure in life. At first, this inner sacrifice concept applied only to the Vedic ascetics with their sacrificial-like self-torturing activities. At some point, however, this more moralized karmic idea apparently merged with the prevailing belief in rebirth.

With this merger karma would come to encompass everyone's actions, which completed its development as a moral system. The completion of the karmic concept most likely developed in the new urban environment because this is where it was needed the most. Not only was this environment the place where kinship ties were the weakest, but in the cities the idea of karma would have appealed to the rising merchant class and somewhat later to the governing bureaucrats.

Karma, as a pan-ethnic moral ideal, in particular, was useful for those doing business with strangers. Right and wrong, truthfulness and honesty in business transactions and negotiations could not depend on the capricious morality of "my group" has the right to cheat "yours." Also, karma holds that moral value, like a merchant's wealth, depends on a willingness to work hard for it; it is achieved, not ascribed. Therefore, the merchant who was ranked low in the caste hierarchy could regard himself as morally equal even to a Brahmin. The Indian kings similarly found karma a useful idea for uniting gradually detribalized and ethnically diverse people.

While the concept of karma as associated with rebirth, was probably initially looked upon suspiciously by the more conservative priestly circles, eventually no group came to benefit from this concept more than the Brahmins. Their position at the top of the social hierarchy came to be totally justified by the concept of karma. Indeed, as the caste system continued to evolve into an increasingly more socially inflexible and morally questionable system it would have needed some morally justifiable dogma to support it.

Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma by Norman C. McClelland

[Xangsamhua]

This is an excerpt from "Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma" by Norman C. McClelland - Perhaps only one persons opinion and more than you ever wanted to know but interesting all the same. It is a direct response to the basis of the idea of Karma.

"The origins of Karma"

Excerpt follows in Buckaroo's post.

Encyclopedia of Reincarnation and Karma by Norman C. McClelland

A very interesting historical interpretation. The author is a Zen master.

It seems there is more than one question here. There are in fact four questions:

1. Did the ancient Indians have the concept of rebirth?

2. Was rebirth linked to moral intent?

3. Did the linking of rebirth with moral intent begin with the Buddha or precede him?

4. Was there anything different about the Buddha's linking of rebirth and karma from what was being taught by others in his Gangetic milieu or prior to his going forth?

1. Traditionally, scholars have argued that there was no concept of rebirth in the early Vedic period. One went either to a good place or a bad one. More recently, however, scholars like Gananath Obeyesekere and Joanna Jurewicz (mightily supported by Richard Gombrich), have argued, using a cognitive linguistics approach, that there are passages in the Rigveda that indicate an early belief in rebirth/reincarnation, but unlinked to moral intent. However, through prayer and ritual, petitioners could obtain the release of a deceased person from his postmortem state and rebirth among his descendants. www.ocbs.org/images/documents/rebirth.pdf

2. In the early Vedic period, however, although the concept of karma was understood in terms of reaping what you sow and, through good habit-forming, becoming a better person, it was not seen as a causative factor in one's postmortem destiny.

3. By the time of the Buddha, it was generally taught that a morally good life would sow the seeds that would eventually lead to union with Brahman, the divine source and essence of all sentient and non-sentient existence, but it is not altogether clear what happened to the individual who, on death, has not attained unity with Brahman, but has made progress through right action and renunciation of desire. The following verse from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (c. 1000 BCE) suggests that the idea of working out one's karma over lives was known well before the time of the Buddha.

The object to which the mind is attached, the subtle self goes together with the deed, being attached to it alone. Exhausting the results of whatever works he did in the world he comes again from that world to this world for [fresh] work. This is for him who desires, but he who does not desire … his breaths do not depart. Being Brahman he goes to Brahman.

http://www.hinduwebs...ceptofkarma.asp

My own copy of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, translated by Eknath Easwaran, has this: When a person dies, it is only the physical body that dies; that person lives on in a non-physical body, which carries the impressions of his past life. It is these impressions that determine his next life. (Ch IV, verse 9)

4. According to Richard Gombrich (in What the Buddha Thought (2009), Ch. 3), the Buddha's innovation was to wrest the concept of karma as action from the Brahmin understanding that it was dependent on ritual, which was performed by the Brahmins and therefore secured their place as the most privileged caste in this life and the next. This claim, that the Buddha ethicised karma, seems inconsistent with the presence of the pre-Buddhist teaching in the Upanishadic passages quoted above. However, I don't know how widespread or clear that teaching is in the Upanishads, and translations may vary. My general understanding is that the Upanishads focus on awareness and attainment of mystical union of the Atman (the essential you and I) with the Self (Brahman) rather than the Samsaric consequences of progress or regress in that project. For this reason, the Upanishads, though inspiring in some important respects, lack the practical vision and method of the Buddha based on the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path and the Middle Way, all of which guide the aspirant toward the extinguishing of desire and of the suffering that follows from it.

Edited August 20, 2012 by Xangsamhua